With all the vampire hoopla in Hollywood these days it would be easy to write off Thirst as just another Twilight knock-off trying to cash in on the popularity of a genre whose better days may already be long gone. Lucky for us, Korean filmmaker Chan-wook Park has an entire ocean between him and the horridness that is Hollywood – leaving him alone to create a vampire movie that juxtaposes moral obligation with the carnal pleasures that vampires seem eternally unable to escape. And it very well may be the most beautiful love story I’ve ever witnessed.
More after the jump!
If you would have asked me this time last week, I would have told you I had no doubt The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard was going be abysmal. It's partially my own fault--I feel I'm pretty hard on comedies: like horror movies, they rarely deliver on what they promise. I'm also not-so in love with The Goods star Jeremy Piven. Sure, when HBO first suckered me into watching Entourage—a new show about a group of douchebags and their famous friend—it was in no small part thanks to Piven's charm, but after a couple seasons of Piven's one-trick pony take on a hyperactive Hollywood agent, I swore the whole mess off.
Well, after actually watching the movie I swore I'd hate, I'm pleased to say that The Goods is actually funny--not enough to suck me into watching Entourage again--but funny enough to overlook my differences with Piven's career choices and sit through 90 minutes of desperately politically incorrect comedy.
Piven motorboats Flight of the Conchords' groupie Kristen Schall, and Kathryn Hahn tries to seduce a 10-year-old boy after the jump!
Bandslam is like the bastard child of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist and High School Musical. It takes the almost-hipness of the first and squashes in the perkiness and stereotypes of the latter. But, don't let its enthusiasm fool you, dear readers, should you be bored this weekend and have already watched the greatly anticipated District 9 AND The Time Traveler's Wife (or should you need something to take your 'tween niece to), Bandslam is a decent option--albeit not near close to perfect.

Since seeing A Perfect Getaway three days ago I've been mulling the movie over in my head quite a bit because I couldn't figure out what to say about it. I knew I didn't enjoy it, but I also knew there were plenty of mindless moviegoers out there who might. A Pefect Getaway was so bland it left me at a loss for words. I even checked Rotten Tomatoes to see if one of my fellow movie reviewers could inspire me (they couldn't) and was not surprised to find A Pefect Getaway at 47% - precariously perched in the middle of the road. This movie is just there - you won't be better or worse off for having watched it unless you're trying to impress a date and want to get laid. It is harmful to the overall quality of films in general but harmless fun at the same time.

I can’t speak for every indie movie lover regarding
Paper Heart. There will be some people who love the docu-comedy starring comedienne Charlyne Yi. You just couldn’t count me in that crowd. Not that I hated this movie, but it just didn’t do it for me. Here’s why.
In the beginning of the flick, Yi admits that she’s never believed in love, no matter footage of her as a child making her dolls get married says differently. So, Yi sets out across the country to interview couples and see if she can figure out exactly what love is. Her interviews with regular folks—rowdy bikers, Elvis wedding officiants and long-time couples—are intertwined with a fictional account of a relationship developing between Yi and George Michael Bluth…er…we mean Michael Cera. No wait, we mean that dude from
Superbad. Aw, screw it; they’re all the same, no matter how cute and awkward they are. Anyhoo…some people might believe these scenes are also part of the documentary given how spontaneous they feel; however, given recent reports that
Yi and Cera broke up—oh, wait, no they never “
ever dated”—there is no doubt that these scenes are faked.